Ricardo Villalobos. Image Credit: Merlijn Hoek Flickr
What else is there left to say at this point?
The effect that the current Coronavirus crisis will have on worldwide clubbing is potentially disastrous. But to be honest, I’ve found it better not to focus on that. Instead, as many people have already proclaimed on Twitter, it’s better to focus on the absolute messy euphoria that will engulf club spaces once this is all over.
Having said that, it’s important to stay on point if you care about the scene. So below, I’ve linked a couple of reliable sources that keep you up to speed and let you get involved with some initiatives that can help save the scenes you love. There’s plenty to be dismissive of in the music industry right now, so don’t do it for the industry. Do it for the artists you love, of any genre, who will be experiencing such huge pay cuts right now that the months ahead for them will become increasingly bleak.
So, without further ado, here is the music I’ve been enjoying this month. There’s a shed-load of it, to be fair. And most of it is geared towards jubilation. There are club friendly offerings as much as there are releases which have, for me, proven essential healing home listening. As much as it’s difficult to listen to club music at the moment, clinging on to memories made in those spaces has highlighted the need to get things back to normal as soon as possible (stay at home, wash your hands etc etc).
When I published the first edition of this column last month, I said that it would be a bi-monthly enterprise. Due to work drying up over the last four weeks, I’ve thankfully found time to piece this together. Depending on how the next few weeks go, the next episode will come either at the end of April or May.
Anyway, pour le club! Onwards. Stay safe. Keep dancing. Phone your loved ones. We’ll get through this.
Here’s a link to rolling Coronavirus music updates from The Quietus.
And here’s a link to scene initiatives and virtual events from Resident Advisor.
Jack Murphy – Blowing Up the Workshop 110
What *IS* essential right now is music to get lost in. And thankfully, US DJ and producer Jack Murphy has provided some mastery for us. His contribution to the Blowing Up the Workshop mix series is just over an hour of pure Ricardo Villalobos, showcasing his latter-day material and posed as a sort of sequel to his 2007 mix for Fabric.
Which makes sense. That mix, Fabric 36, was co-mixed by Frankfurt legend and sometime collaborator Dorian Paic. But Murphy’s mix is more human, tangible and party-centric than its predecessor. It maintains enough oddness but taps even further into the human psyche. The vocal refrain of ‘I don’t know what happened to all of us’, which repeats around the 50-minute mark, feels incredibly apt. Otherwise, it’s a perfectly fluid mix that proves that Villalobos’ music works best when partnered with itself, entirely on its own terms.
Hiroglifics & Sinistarr – BS6 (Hooversound Recordings)
It’s long been a fact of UK clubbing culture; 160+ bpms inspire the most jubilant abandon. London-based DJ Sherelle knows this only too well – check out this loose Boiler Room set of hers from last year.
Together with long-time collaborator Naina, she’s launched Hooversound records and BS6 is the debut release. Over the four tracks here, Hyroglifics and Detroit’s Sinistarr combine their respective approaches to dnb, footwork and techno and come through with one of the most intriguing releases either has ever produced.
But there’s another reason BS6 is so important. We’re all missing club culture right now. But let’s just say, for example, that you’ve just finished a virtual pub quiz via Skype with all your mates. You’re a few cans deep but your house is now silent as the small hours approach. Throw this on and by the time you get to the ecstatic coupling of ‘Turn It Up’ and ‘Turbo Island’, you’ll have one finger held aloft in your favourite basement sweat box.
Various Artists – If-Only Big Material (Self-Released)
Stonewall is a London-based charity that ensures safe housing for Queer and Non-Binary people. In order to give something back to the community that has informed dance music since its beginnings, the webzine If-Only are donating all proceeds from their new compilation Big Material to the charity.
Released on a ‘name your price’ basis via Bandcamp, it’s absolutely stonking. The early run oozes warmth, from River Yarra’s sunset idyll ‘Café Del Frog’ to the subtly world-building mystery of Benoit B’s ‘Sonic Shelter’. There’s the shadowy, hypnotic techno funk of Daniel 58’s ‘Measure of Mellow’ whilst Bogdan Drazic’s nightmarish psych-out ‘Blood Sport’ represents the borderlands between ambient and a 1940’s horror score.
There’s plenty that’s evocative of the club as well. You can imagine the zinging, rolling breaks of Warzou’s ‘Joint Metallique’ slotting perfectly into a Willikens & Ivkovic b2b set, while Ranstad’s ‘God Lust’ recalls peak, EBM-driven sweatiness at Hamburg’s Golden Pudel. And Ciel, under her Moonphase guise, couldn’t have titled ‘Elastic Donk’ any better, it being a head rush of sugary rave.
Various Artists – Cache 01(SVBKVLT)
This was originally released last year, but this March saw its first-time vinyl release. And that seems like a good enough opportunity to write about it, because there is not one single dud on it. SVBKVLT and its affiliated artists have been putting Shanghai and the wider Far East’s electronic scene on the map for years now, and on Cache 01 they condense that influence and impact into a boiling cauldron of hypersonic fierceness.
The vicious sci-fi creak of Yen Tech’s ‘Acceleratus’ kicks things off, sounding half like a destructive robotic life force powering up and half like the trailer for a nightmarish Event Horizon sequel. It sets the tone nicely, because here the alumni outsmart the Western mob by taking genre tropes one step further. Osheyack & Nahash’s ‘Hold Pattern’ sounds like DJ Stingray – at his most pulverising – finally reaching another dimension. Hyph11E’s ‘Sinking’ takes the now overcooked techno/dnb hybrid to thrilling, film score-esque levels of dramatism. And later on, Swimful’s ‘Nailz’ draws on classic grime and drapes it in a twisted furthering, Mumdance style.
DJ Trystero – High Speed Wind (The Trilogy Tapes)
There’s very little information online about DJ Trystero. They’re an affiliate of mysterious Tokyo label and party crew City-2 St. Giga, who’ve previously released 12” by the likes of Anthony Naples and Buttechno. This is their debut release, and it somehow makes sense for it to come via The Trilogy Tapes; this is the kind of forward footed and shrouded music that label deals in.
Though it sounds like neither artist, aesthetically High Speed Wind slots somewhere between Forest Drive West and DJ Python. For the most part, everything is cavernous; everything swirls as though it’s being transmitted from a mountainside. It’s both a product of contemporary ambient techno stylings and comes from its own niche of time and place. But it pulls off dynamics brilliantly too. Track 3 has a real Workshop-esque feel in its super lo-fi bounce and slightly eerier atmosphere. Track 5 judders and marches, its swooning fog-horn synths opting for a more direct approach. It’s another example of the Far East providing a guiding light in a scene becoming increasingly ordinary.
Kolida Babo – Exodus (Coby Sey & Who’s the Technician? Remixes) (MIC Records)
Greek duo Kolida Babo have garnered kudos from everyone from The Bug to BBC 6music. Their self-titled record from 2017 (via MIC records) closed with ‘Exodus’, a beautifully sinister marriage of the traditional Armenian Duduk, ominous Moog synths and eddying electronics.
The three remixes on this EP – one from Londoner Coby Sey and two from the Wah Wah Wino crew’s Who’s the Technician? – take the beat-less original and aim for danceability, but not without the song’s context and reflection. Coby Sey brings a big South London energy, keeping it grinding and pensive.
For the first of his remixes, Who’s the Technician? Delivers 7 minutes of slamming, slow, cosmic dancehall, powered by menacing low-end that entwines gorgeously with the increasingly spacious atmospherics. Its epic, far-out tone is reminiscent of Davy Kehoe’s The Pilot, especially as its second half favours drawn-out hypnotism over club friendliness. His second remix is shorter but even more hallucinogenic, this time recalling the time-frazzled dub and bashment that labels like Editions Gravat and Bokeh Versions have made their mission statement.
Various Artists – Quinze (Lapsus Records)
Via both their radio station and record label, Barcelona’s Lapsus crew have become a vital force in European electronic music. To celebrate fifteen years of existence, they present Quinze, pitched as ‘fifteen unreleased songs from artists that best define the Lapsus sound’.
With most prevalence on ambience and atmosphere, Quinze sits comfortably between curative listening and gleeful club toughness. It starts on a sun-dappled but restrained tip, as Johanna Knutsson’s ‘For Gwendoline’ rolls into The Belgium’s celestial ‘Sleep Will Do’. Steve Hauschildt’s ‘Ecce Reverie’ is a shimmering early highlight, all freezing piano notes, skittering synths and an underbelly of Aphex Twin-esque squall.
Karen Gwyer comes through with the compilation highlight in ‘Mahler’s Heartbeat’; an emphatic stomp of milky synth work, joyous acid and righteous hi-hat action. Gabor Lazar and Machine Woman stay true to themselves with ‘Wubs and Wahs’ and ‘Technoo’ respectively, representing the hard-as-nails end of the Lapsus spectrum.
High Rise And Ink 